PREFACE: As always, I like to preface my reviews by saying that I believe the viewing of a film is a wholly personal experience and notions of “good” films or “bad” films are largely irrelevant and a matter of personal preference. However, I do like to consider a number of things when reviewing a film: my own affective experience watching it, how the film philosophically informs our culture, and the technical prowess of the all the artists involved. These things, I think, are more important than making a qualitative judgment on whether or not it was a “good” movie. So, without further ado, a few films that I liked this year. And a great deal of rambling about them.

There is a difficulty in making a Superman movie is that is: he’s f*cking Superman! Other superheroes are interesting to watch, because even if they have powers, they also have weaknesses, they’re flawed, they can be killed. They’re not, to put it literally, Superman. Superman isn’t interesting. So of course we’ve gotta bring in the kryptonite, because the only way you can have any kind of stakes is if Superman for some reason can’t be Super. God, so boring.

Man of Steel had a lot of detractors, but I think it’s the first time in a while that someone has done Superman right. Zack Snyder embraced the inherent silliness of Superman and told the story with just the right amount of camp. He walked a fine line, never getting absurd and never taking himself too seriously. He stayed away from the kryptonite, he let a wonderful “discovery-of-powers” storyline play out. And he made it a story of fathers and sons, and mothers and sons. And I think the distinction is important. It’s not a film about parents and sons; it’s a film about the individual relationships that children form with both their mother an their father and how very different they can be.

And of course there is much flying and exploding and shooting and Superman descending, Christ-like, in the sun with his cape billowing and the huddled masses gazing up in awe. I guess what I’m saying is that, mood-wise, it feels like it’s come straight out of the 80s. Everyone behaves so seriously in such a silly story that we begin to take said silly story seriously. And I enjoy that.

I missed out on Silver Linings Playbook last year. I’m gonna have to rectify that. I’m such a fan of David O. Russell’s past work, including the oft-derided I Heart Huckabees. There’s something manic and ethereal about his work. His characters are never quite sure exactly what they’re doing — they’re frightened and sad and unbalanced and alive. You’d be hard-pressed to find characters more alive than the ones in Russell’s films.

American Hustle is a con-story, and a good one. But it’s a con-story filled with vibrant, flawed, inevitably-tragic characters. Though he’s notoriously difficult to work with (he called Lily Tomlin a “cunt” and head-butted George Clooney) there’s something about his method that inspires crackerjack performances. And everybody’s in top-form here.

I’m so happy that this movie exists. It’s a simple, sad, and sweet story about a 20-something dancer (writer/star Greta Gerwig) living in New York. It’s about art, expression, ability, and, most saliently, about a vital friendship between two women. In a world of Bechdel-test failures, Francis Ha stands as a shining example of complex, flawed, interesting female characters.

[Yes, the Bechdel test — the feminist “test” for gender-equality in film that tries to locate two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man — is dubious and often limiting (Gravity fails, for example, despite Sandra Bullock’s total badassery), but it’s still important to promoting the role of women in the cinema to note that such a high percentage of films “fail.”]

Mumblecore darling Greta Gerwig has isolated something important about the partially-privileged middle-class artist’s existence. There is a quiet desperation encountered by the generation that was told that they are special and can do anything if they set their mind to it, when they find out that they aren’t and they can’t.

This is not exactly a Disney movie. Randy Moore’s debut film is a staggeringly ambitious tour through the dark corners of Disney World and mid-life despair. The first thing anyone mentions whenever talking about Escape From Tomorrow is the fact that it was filmed without permits or permission, guerilla-style in Disney World. The fact that the film hasn’t been litigated out of existence by Disney is remarkable in itself (the film’s website even has a clock counting the number of hours since the film’s release that they haven’t been sued). But the threat of lawsuits and the unbridled audacity of the film’s production are just hooks — Escape is also a very effective art-house horror film. Roy Abramsohn plays a middle-aged father taking in the Disney sights with his wife, son, and daughter. Jim’s children are demanding, his wife emotionally-distant and he is burning with sexual frustration and a mid-life fear of aging. While wandering the park with his family, he becomes enraptured by a pair of underage French girls, brimming with youth and sexuality. This is the point at which the film likely lost a good portion of its audience’s favour — obliging us to follow a protagonist as creepy and unlikable as Jim and asking us to feel anxious when terrifying things begin happening to him. If Disney World is a place of magic, happiness, and eternal youth, then the horror of the film is that when the existential pain and fear of the real world seeps in, it becomes as macabre and twisted as Disney is innocent and joyous.

The film is a little rough around the edges, with some less-than-perfect exposures, some dodgy greenscreen shots, and some performances that could’ve done with a few more takes. But the end result is an effective, frightening story with real characters, told in a vibrant monochrome cinematography that de-saturates the ostentatious colours of Disney World into shades of grey.

It’s hard to describe why Gravity is so intense. Certainly the sound and the visuals are masterful. And Sandra Bullock is very good. But there’s something about the way she flails around in space, trying to grab onto things before she floats away into nothingness that is damned nerve-wracking. Film logic tells us that even though she’s in imminent danger, she’s not going to die — at least not yet when we’re only 35 minutes into the film. But still our stomachs turn somersaults every time her fingers slip. Perhaps it’s something to do with how effectively Cuarón has rendered outer space. It’s as cold and dark and suffocating a void as any that’s been put on film. Thank Emmanuel Lubezki and the pioneering visual effects team for that. Gravity is big, simple, and effective.

“Warning: This film may contain explicit feelings.” That was the brilliant tagline for the North American release of Blue is the Warmest Color, an erotic French drama by French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche. The film gained a bit of notoriety after winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes for its explicit sexuality and the director’s tyrannical methods (a grueling 5 1/2 month shoot and a hair-trigger temper that’d make David O. Russell say “calm the fuck down, it’s a movie, don’t make me throw a lamp at your head”).

The film’s story follows Adèle, a high school student who discovers the fluidity of her sexuality when she falls in love with Emma, a fine arts student four years her senior. It’s a film about growing up, becoming a woman, and the visceral explosion of sexuality that comes along with it. Sex is a powerful act, and with it come powerful emotions. The explicit nature of the sex in the film is important because it’s a vivid, sensory extreme, and of the same origin as the desolate heartache that inevitably follows.

The English Civil War. A hunt for buried treasure. Hallucinations and violence. These are the things Ben Wheatley brings to his third feature, A Field In England. A small group of of less-than-brave folk from either side of the often-politically-confusing English Civil War decide, after fleeing from battle: fuck it, let’s go get drunk. Among them is an alchemist’s servant, charged with tracking down powerful magics stolen by a rival alchemist. This thief soon joins and takes control of the group and compels them to aid him in his search for buried treasure.

Filmed in black-and-white and set, as the title suggests, entirely in a field in England, the film is frightening, violent, and philosophical. And it becomes a savage delirium when one of the party is fed hallucinogenic mushrooms in an attempt to divine the location of the treasure. Jump and Wheatley play havoc in the editing room, delivering a memorable and unorthodox hallucination sequence.

The film takes at face value the ostensible reality of alchemy and the philosophical capacity of the 18th Century English soldier. Their challenges are not our own, but we recognize the basic struggles contained within them. We see cruelty, greed, and violence exerting their power on those weaker. And we see the desperate, ineffective rage of the weak, by nature subservient to those born stronger.

Lordy, lardy, look at Marty. Mr. Scorcese is serving up one great big bowl of controversy with this new film of his. Seventy-one years old and still relevant. The Wolf of Wall Street is a deconstruction of the outrageous boys’ club that is Wall Street. It’s so outlandish, so obscene, so pornographic that people didn’t know what to do with it. For some inexplicable reason, it was in the “Musical/Comedy” category at the Golden Globes. And while it is funny, it’s actually a desperately sad film that you can’t seem to do anything but laugh at.

Leo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a real life Wall Street tycoon with an insatiable appetite for sex, drugs, and moneymoneymoney. Forget the mafia — Wall Street is where the real gangsters are. Belfort starts out small, poor. And, like every American dreams, he makes it big. And I mean big big. I-have-a-helicopter-on-my-yacht big. Leo plays Beflort with a delicious mixture of brash confidence and frantic childishness. He’s like the leader of a teen gang — powerful, vicious, spoiled.

It’s not so much the deconstruction of Wall Street culture that’s caused a bit of a stir — it’s how the film seems to glory in its decadence while at the same time decrying its degenerate ethics. We all know that it was people like Jordan Belfort who sent the American economy into a crash-and-burn tailspin that it has yet to recover from. But watching The Wolf of Wall Street, we all — kinda, sorta — want to be Leo, whether we admit it or not. Yes, he’s a self-centered, egomaniacal, devious, lying, asshole, prick of a thief. But goddamn if he isn’t a charming little bastard who gets whatever he wants.

As much as we might advocate for social justice, equality, humanism in our own lives… we still wonder sometimes… Wouldn’t it be nice? Just a day in his shoes? The Wolf of Wall Street’s crime is not so much its representation of the obscenity of Wall Street; it’s that the film is a grotesque mirror, a portrait in the attic, our own pornographic dream. It’s the realization that, if given the chance, it might be harder than we think to behave any better than Belfort. And that shit’s scary.

I wrote a fair amount on Spring Breakers earlier this year when it first came out and, having recently watched it a second time, have very little to add. It’s still intelligent and exploitative and violent and sad and funny and pretty and probably my favourite film of this year.

This is what I wrote:

When he penned the uncompromising script for Larry Clark’s Kids at age 19, Harmony Korine showed an uncanny ability to distill the sexual energies and metaphysical confusion of 90s youth into filmic language. Now, at age 40, with what is arguably his first “mainstream” film Spring Breakers, he shows that his connection to the frenetic pulse of media-saturated, over-sexed, coming-of-age teenagers is as relevant as when he was one of them. Though his approach is now more voyeuristic than immersive with its warm lights, dripping soundscapes, and pretty, pretty girls.

Disney princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens meld sensuously together with Ashley Benson (Pretty Little Liars)and Rachel Korine (partner to Harmony) to take on the bacchanalian of Spring Break with as much violence and sex as they can muster. They rarely wear more than bikinis (and often wear less). Hudgens and Benson are the uncontested leaders, and Korine holds her own as proverbial party monster; but the religious Gomez is ultimately overwhelmed and unsettled by their debauchery. For Gomez, Spring Break is a coming-of-age journey, but her child-like philosophizing about “finding herself” and “finally being who she really is” prompts kindhearted but condescending snickers from Hudgens and Benson, who are after something much bigger than sex, drugs, and self-awakening.

Enter Alien, played with astounding fearlessness by James Franco. Always an actor to make bold choices, Franco buries himself in the role of the dreadlocked, silver-grilled hustler and hip hop artist Alien, who is very much, as he says, “not from this planet”. All the intelligence, good-looks, and charm that we know Franco possesses are disappeared into the preening, simple-minded, powerfully-creepy presence of Alien. He provides an outlet for the girls’ insatiable hunger for more and finds his own fears and desires actualized in his relationship with them.

What starts off as a wild road-trip movie quickly turns into something less defined. The editing keeps folding back in on itself, both anticipating what is to come and replaying what has already happened. We are rarely in one place for too long, experiencing most of the film either in retrospect or as premonition. It’s part sexploitation, part ethereal art-film. It’s like seeing the Hunter S. Thompson-like depravity of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meet the playful and pretty existentialism of Vera Chitlová’s Daisies (a sublime 1966 Czech New Wave film), subtracting all of Chitlová’s feminism, then adding Skrillex and sub-machine guns to the mix; the film is chaotic, titillating, and beautiful.

Spring Breakers is an experience unto itself (and is nothing like its trailer suggests it will be). It’s a dream. A terrifying, beautiful dream. And like a little-known pop singer called Britney Spears once said, “It’s haunting me.”

It’s movies like this that instill hope in me that Hollywood might be able to slowly cure itself of its big, empty sickness. And by this I mean the idea that in order to get people to watch a movie, studios have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and deliver lowest common denominator plots. But regardless of how much money seems to be floating ubiquitously throughout Hollywood, it’s by no means infinite. Big movies aren’t the sure wins they used to be. Take R.I.P.D., for example. The film cost $130 million to make and only brought in $77 million. That’s a huge loss. And while Universal can swallow that loss, it can’t swallow several in succession. Four or five R.I.P.D.s in a row could seriously cripple one of the most powerful studios in America.

Our daring solution? Films like The Place Beyond the Pines. A “meager” $15 million budget, but with its masterful storytelling and engaging characters (spurred on by a touch of star-power from Ryan Gosling et al.) the film brought in $35 million. Huge win.

But enough ranting about Hollywood’s woes. What makes this film special? To me it’s the structure and Cianfrance’s use of ellipses. The film is divided into three acts, each taking place in a very different time period and with different characters as focal points. Huge chunks of time are missing. It’s story by omission — a multi-generational saga of actions and consequences, masculinity and morality. And while it’s not as concise as Hemingway, not as subtle as Ozu, not as grandiose as García Márquez (and those are some damn big names to aspire to), Pines is a modern American epic that is enthralling from start to finish.

It’s difficult to critique 12 Years a Slave because it’s such an important film. Steve McQueen’s third feature film does for American slavery what Spielberg’s Schindler’s List did for the Holocaust: puts it on film in all its ugliness. It’s incredible that it took until 2013 for a film like this to be produced. The “Great American Slave Drama” simply did not exist before this. Certainly Spielberg contributed valuably, with both Amistad and Lincoln, but they are films that explore slavery from the outside. McQueen’s film is personal, intimate and harrowing — an experience of slavery from within. It’s a cultural salve for the glorious debacle that was Tarantino’s Django Unchained and the film Spike Lee should’ve made a decade ago. (Though who am I kidding, Spike Lee would’ve fucked this up as badly as he did Miracle at St. Anna.)

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free-born black man living in New York state who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Based on Northup’s memoir, the film recollects the 12 years that Northup spent as a slave, working Louisiana plantations, until his rescue.

12 Years a Slave forces us to confront slavery for what it was: an unimaginable evil perpetrated, not by monsters (though certainly there were monsters among them), but by people — men and women that would otherwise be considered “good”. It is a film about pride, cruelty, survival, and the psychological consequences of both being and owning slaves.

If I am to attempt any sort of critique, it would simply be the following banal observations: 1) the focus-puller must’ve had Parkinson’s or something, and 2) it seemed like nobody but Michael Fassbender could keep their goddamn accent straight. (I’m looking at you, Brad Pitt, with your “Canadian” drawl.)

12 Years a Slave is required viewing. I’m not being hyperbolic or overly-imperative. Watch this film. And eat your heart out, Spike Lee.

For anyone familiar with Hertzfeldt’s work as animator of the famous “Rejected” and “Genre” cartoons, you may have picked up on the nihilistic absurdism on display in Hertzfeldt’s comedy shorts. Even in his short films, there is a certain sense of magnitude to his stories, which all seem to end in death and chaos. It’s Such a Beautiful Day is long-form Hertzfeldt. An amalgamation of three short films, “Everything will be OK”, “I Am So Proud of You”, and a third installment bearing the same name as the long-form film, It’s Such a Beautiful Day is a philosophical odyssey through the strange life and history of its protagonist, Bill. Bill, a big-eyed, rotund figure whose only distinguishing feature is a dapper hat, is composed of roughly 20 single strokes of a pencil. Bill resignedly makes his way through a lonely and absurd existence, accepting as unavoidable the bizarre effects his mental illness has on his already unstable reality.

Hertzfeldt combines his signature black-and-white pencil drawings and paper-crumpling animation with splashes of colour and live footage. Though his drawings often resemble the violent doodles of a 4th-grader, Hertzfeldt’s touch of humanity elevates them to high art. And with a score procured from greats such as Bizet, Strauss, Wagner, Smetana, Bremner, Rachmaninoff, and Chopin, Hertzfeldt is able to transport us to a rare place, full of metaphysical intrigue and questions of mortality.

Hertzfeldt’s film is a requiem for memory, family, and the passage of time. As years pass, we find that faces once important and vital to us melt away into absurd, unrecognizable impressions. Names that passed our lips with such frequency are forgotten. And It’s Such a Beautiful Day captures this with aching simplicity.

It is impossible to overstate the emotional and psychological impact of this film. Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary shakes the very foundations of filmmaking as an art form and calls into question the essence of what it means to be human. If that sounds suspiciously like hyperbole, then read on, friend, read on. In 1965, an armed resistance mounted a failed coup d’état of the government of Indonesia. The military response was to immediately assign blame to the Indonesian Communist Party, catalyzing a nationwide purge of all those affiliated with the Communists. In the following months, the Indonesian Army, along with thousands of local vigilantes, executed approximately 500,000 alleged Communists.

In The Act of Killing, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer interviews a number of the most notorious local executioners from the 1965 purge, in particular a local gangster by the name of Anwar Congo, said to have personally executed upwards of 1000 people. Now in his 70s, Congo takes the filmmakers on a tour of his killing sites, describing his preferred killing techniques, and how he found inspiration from the sadism he saw in Hollywood gangster films. Oppenheimer then invites the executioners to re-enact the killings by whatever artistic means they like. He invites them to become the movie villains they so often imitated.

The result is an utterly devastating portrait of cruelty and equivocatory philosophy. The grotesquerie of Congo’s crimes is so great that, translated to film, it appears absurd, even comical. They dress themselves as American gangsters, graceful women laud them with song and dance, Congo does the cha-cha on the killing floor. Congo is a slight, aging, grandfatherly-type with a penchant for colourful suits. He is charming, polite, and proud, excited by the chance to tell his story to the camera. But he is also troubled by nightmares and profound ethical uncertainty. In spite of everything, we almost like him. We empathize. He is a little boy with a magnifying glass showing us how he tortures ants, but who is frightened to death of his dreams of the ants returning for revenge.

A filmmaker is a manipulator of emotions. Films are, by design, evocative. Simply put, we cry when characters die; we cheer when they achieve their goal. But when Oppenheimer places us in the headspace of this extraordinary, monstrous man, we unavoidably find ourselves “on his side”. Not in the sense that we condone his actions, but in the sense that we get to see them from his perspective. Alongside Anwar Congo, we are confronted by the immeasurable evil of his crimes; and we are with Congo when he tentatively re-discovers his humanity. And, just maybe, we discover how far our own humanity extends when, coaxed on by the ineffable power of 24 still photographs per second, we proffer our own grace and empathy to this mass-murderer.

EPILOGUE

Well, that’s it from me. There are a few films that are conspicuously absent from this list, as I haven’t gotten around to seeing them yet. They are, notably:

Inside Llewyn DavisHerNebraskaThe Great BeautyBlue Jasmine

There are also a few honorable mentions. Films that I enjoyed very much, but lost out to the 13 on the list:

I walked out of an opening night matinee of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers into the first true sunny day of Vancouver spring with a big ol’ grin stretching ‘cross my face. When he penned the uncompromising script for Larry Clark’s Kids at age 19, Harmony Korine showed an uncanny ability to distill the sexual energies and metaphysical confusion of 90s youth into filmic language. Now, at age 40, with what is arguably his first “mainstream” film Spring Breakers, he shows that his connection to the frenetic pulse of media-saturated, over-sexed, coming-of-age teenagers is as relevant as when he was one of them. Though his approach is now more voyeuristic than immersive with its warm lights, dripping soundscapes, and pretty, pretty girls.

(L to R) Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson

Disney princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens meld sensuously together with Pretty Little Liars‘ Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine (partner to Harmony) to take on the bacchanalian of Spring Break with as much violence and sex as they can muster. They rarely wear more than bikinis (and often wear less). Hudgens and Benson are the uncontested leaders, and Korine holds her own as proverbial party monster; but the religious Gomez is ultimately overwhelmed and unsettled by their debauchery. For Gomez, Spring Break is a coming-of-age journey, but her child-like philosophizing about “finding herself” and “finally being who she really is” prompts kindhearted but condescending snickers from Hudgens and Benson, who are after something much bigger than sex, drugs, and self-awakening.

Enter Alien, played with astounding fearlessness by James Franco. Always an actor to make bold choices, Franco buries himself in the role of the dreadlocked, silver-grilled hustler and hip hop artist Alien, who is very much, as he says, “not from this planet”. All the intelligence, good-looks, and charm that we know Franco possesses are disappeared into the preening, simple-minded, powerfully-creepy presence of Alien. He provides an outlet for the girls’ insatiable hunger for more and finds his own fears and desires actualized in his relationship with them.

James Franco as Alien

What starts off as a wild road-trip movie quickly turns into something less defined. The editing keeps folding back in on itself, both anticipating what is to come and replaying what has already happened. We are rarely in one place for too long, experiencing most of the film either in retrospect or as premonition. It’s part sexploitation, part ethereal art-film. It’s like seeing the Hunter S. Thompson-like depravity of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meet the playful and pretty existentialism of Vera Chitlová’s Daisies (a sublime 1966 Czech New Wave film), subtracting all of Chitlová’s feminism, then adding Skrillex and sub-machine guns to the mix; the film is chaotic, titillating, and beautiful.

Spring Breakers is an experience unto itself (and is nothing like its trailer suggests it will be). It’s a dream. A terrifying, beautiful dream. And like a little-known pop singer once said, “It’s haunting me.”

Rating: 4.5 stars. (Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver. 1st viewing.)

“And everytime I see you in my dreams / I see your face, it’s haunting me.” ~Britney Spears

So I’m back at ‘er after a protracted absence from blogging. And in style. Here is my altogether-too-long list of movies from 2012 that tore into my heart and made it their own. But maybe that’s over-dramatic. Here are some good movies and some things I wrote about them. I’ve ordered them according to some misguided quest to rank personal preference and, if you disagree, by all means do it loudly.

So The Dark Knight Rises is relatively low on my list. Not because it’s a bad film. But because relative to Christopher Nolan’s usual calibre of film, I find it lacking. Of course, a mediocre Nolan film is better than most Hollywood fare, but my high hopes for TDKR were left wanting. I loved how dark it got emotionally. Bruce Wayne has always been a troubled fella, but this film rips his entire safety net out from under him. With no access to his money or to the stalwart Alfred, the Batman must rise from a low, low place. And that makes for some damn good cinema. What I didn’t find effective was how Bane’s story played out. His prison origin was fascinating, but once he actually has control of Gotham, his plan has more or less played itself out and there is nowhere left to go. His decision to take on Ra’s al Ghul’s mantle and simply destroy Gotham seems a weak decision from such a strong character. Though, SPOILER ALERT – seeing as how he is motivated out of loyalty to Talia al Ghul rather than his own desires is actually quite romantic. END SPOILER. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I am quite pleased with this film. Though I thought the supposedly-climactic return of the Batman played out a little bit like Escape From New York and I kept expecting Snake Plissken to show up. And the end, in which the Batman SPOILER AGAIN hauls the bomb out of the city before it explodes, making everyone think he is dead is such a common trope that it was almost eye-rollingly obvious. (Other examples of “relocating the bomb” include, but are not limited to: this year’s Avengers, The Iron Giant, Superman II, Angels & Demons, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Stargate, Heroes (Season 1), 24 (Season 2), Lost, and an episode of Pokemon). END SPOILER(s). So I guess, in summation, I’m a little torn on how much I like this film. There was so much good in it, as well as so much mediocrity. Though it seems like simply by writing about it, I find that I like it more than I initially thought I did. Which is often the mark of a good film.

One-Line Review: Dark and atmospheric but suffers from weak dialogue (relative to what I’d expect from the Nolans) and plot clichés.

11. Skyfall (Sam Mendes) [Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

James Bond films are rarely known for their resemblance to family dramas. But the Daniel Craig era has been one of reinvention and the third installment is one of the reinventiest. Without skimping on action, gadgets or cars, Skyfall also gives us some classic Freudian melodrama. Bond returns to his childhood home and some serious mother-son issues are hashed out (though not in the way you might think). I’ve always been of the opinion that throwing some serious emotional weight behind action sequences makes them more satisfying to watch and Sam Mendes delivers. The closest Bond has come to having a family previous to this was in the ever-popular George Lazenby installment, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which he is married for all of 37 seconds before his wife is riddled with bullets by Telly Savalas. But here the drama is sharp, the action intense, and the cars just as cool as ever. Mendes obviously has a respect for the history of the James Bond franchise and does his best to pay homage to it whenever he can (perhaps mitigating the sweeping thematic changes he’s making to the series).

One-Line Review: My new favorite Bond girl is Judi Dench.

10. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson) [DVD]

I came late to the Moonrise Kingdom bandwagon. I’d been told many great things, but while I’ve always liked Wes Anderson’s films, I’ve never loved any of them (with the exception of Royal Tenenbaums which is just marvelous). Moonrise Kingdom, however, is right up there with Tenenbaums for me. Maybe I was feeling sentimental at the time. Maybe something about Anderson’s fairy tale version of 1965. Maybe it was the deadpan-comic-serious way Anderson’s actors deliver their lines. But there was something altogether charming about this little love story, which is played with utmost sincerity and emotional weight. We know the two runaway lovers are only 12 years old, but they teach us to take them as seriously as they take themselves. Moonrise Kingdom is a charming love story that doesn’t deviate from Anderson’s established style, but is still effective and heartwarming.

Tackling The Hobbit in three movies is a wholly different approach from taking on the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (well, hexalogy if you’re counting) in as much time. Where Jackson had to hack and slash his way through Lord of the Rings, he is here expanding and drawing out the material, exploring scenes to their full potential. And for this I applaud him. Though it’s been a good 12 years (Jesus, really? Time to start coloring my hair) since I’ve read The Hobbit, I can still tell that Jackson is staying as true to the material as a filmmaker can, scenes often playing out word-for-word. And Jackson’s additions are not blasphemous to the faithful either (well, they might be to the fanatics, but they were going to be upset regardless so it’s a moot point). The addition of a pale orc named Azok with a mission of vengeance against the throne-less dwarf-king Thorin is a necessary addition from a filmic perspective. The film covers only the first third of the novel, in which there is an absence of any true antagonist, and Azok is an appropriate through-line.

It’s an interesting result. With his film, Jackson is returning to the serial format, popular in the silent era with The Perils of Pauline or the French Les Vampires, in which audiences would have to return to the cinemas for each new installment. Yes, it’s a none-too-subtle studio money-grab, but it also changes how we experience going to the cinema. Because it is not a whole film; it is only a portion of one. Jackson and his team do an admirable job of getting the film to stand alone. But the fact remains that, despite a rollicking good adventure, very little has been accomplished or resolved. We found the same thing happen with Harry Potter and Twilight (sorry for grouping them together) splitting their finales into two films: the first half just wasn’t really a film. Seen together, Harry Potter 7 is a sprawling epic and a worthy ending for the series. Seen apart, the second installment is still very good but the first falls flat. So the question is: do we judge The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on what we’ve seen? Or in anticipation of what we know we’re going to see as the series continues?

Also, the 3D was nice and I’m sure the 48fps wasn’t too nauseating. I saw it in reg’lar ol’ 24fps and am just going to ignore that entire discussion. Oh, and Andy Serkis, I love you.

My experience of Cloud Atlas is colored very strongly by the fact that I saw it almost immediately after finishing David Mitchell’s novel. It had been on my to-read list for ages, but the release of the film forced me into it because I wanted my experience of the novel to be purely imaginative, not tainted by being unable to see anyone other than Tom Hanks in every role or Hugo Weaving in drag. Reading fiction is a very personal experience; you create the world and the characters from the words on the page. Film does the work for you. I wanted my own world, and as grand as the Wachowski siblings own vision of the Cloud Atlas sextet was, I prefer mine (as I’m sure many readers do their own).

This is not to say that it was not an excellent film. It lost some of the subtlety that is possible in fiction and less so on the screen. (And when I say “some” of the subtlety, I mean “shit, son, you done just spelled it all right out, di’n’t you?”) The film gets a lot of flak for being “pseudo-deep” and relying too much on the whole reincarnation thing (and too much on Tom Hanks). But the film actually does a number of interesting things. The book follows six story lines, each taking place during a different point in history (including an Orwellian future and its post-apocalyptic beyond). Mitchell presents his material palindromically, telling each story (except the middle one) in two parts (a 12345654321 structure). By chopping up Mitchell’s hexapalindromic structure into filmic cross-cutting, the chronological progression of each storyline plays out in synch with the others. In Mitchell’s novel, the midpoint in the book represents the furthest point on a world-time scale, before continuing backwards in time to wrap up the initial story lines and conclude thematically. But the film has free access to each story whenever the filmmakers see fit to cut to it.

Both structural techniques can be read very explicitly as expressions of “counterpoint” within their medium. Counterpoint is a musical term (prominent during the Baroque period and mastered by Bach) describing the relationship between voices that are harmonically-interdependent, but independent in both rhythm and contour. Counterpoint was the primary expression of music theory during Bach’s time (1685-1750) and music theory was largely dictated by Church doctrine, which contained a series of very specific rules declaring what made a melody acceptable. The types of intervals you can use, the order in which they are allowed to be played, the number of times a directional interval is allowed, are all explicitly laid out in the rules of counterpoint. By making a composer one of his protagonists, Mitchell was very consciously translating counterpoint theory into fiction. The Wachowskis and Tykwer are doing the same thing to Mitchell, translating counterpoint fiction into film. The thing about counterpoint is that it’s difficult to be original or creative when you have very restricting rules to which you must adhere. But this is the genius of both the film and the novel: like counterpoint intervals, we’ve seen all this before. The slave drama, the political thriller, the Orwellian future, the post-apocalypse. They are all familiar to us. But like Bach, who wrote exquisite, emotional music using the rigid counterpoint system, Cloud Atlas’s success is not in the originality of any of its stories, but in the way in which the stories are played together using their respective familiar pieces. All criticism of the poorly-executed Asian-face aside, reusing actors in each of the sextet’s voices is crucial to the film’s own self-imposed rules of counterpoint. No singular story in the film is so great that it warrants its own movie. But played together, they form a score for something new, something creative, something affecting. The cross-cutting techniques inherent in producing a film lend themselves well to counterpoint, even more so than Mitchell’s palindromic structure. And the Wachowskis’ film plays out the independent rhythms and contours of each voice, while inextricably linking it to the whole.

One-Line Review: Despite its shortcomings, the Wachowski-Tykwer-Mitchell film-fugue is a resounding success.

The far left critics think it’s a flippant portrayal of the history of slavery. The far right critics think it’s reverse racism. Spike Lee refuses to watch it. It’s even taken some of the heat off of Modern Warfare 3 as the scapegoat for violence in entertainment breeding violence in real life. Hooray for controversy! I really don’t feel it necessary to respond to any of the critiques leveled at Tarantino’s latest film; there’s enough of that floating around the Interwebs as it is. I just thought this movie was great fun. Structurally, it’s essentially Taken written as a slave story. Liam Neeson (Jamie Foxx) has his daughter (wife) kidnapped (legally sold) into slavery (slavery). To get her back, he uses his very special set of skills to kill everyone in Europe (Mississippi). Granted, Tarantino’s film is much more nuanced than Taken, but at its heart, it’s just immensely satisfying to watch Jamie Foxx kill all those white people (ahem, slavers). There isn’t much room for complex characters in a film that’s so outrageously violent it’s basically a cartoon. With the exception of Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schultz, everyone in the film is either a racist or a slave (or both if you consider Samuel L. Jackson’s fantastic performance as Stephen the house slave). Waltz shoulders all of the racial tension in the film – he’s the only character who exists in the gray. He abhors slavery on moral grounds, but just finds it so useful sometimes. It’s an enormous responsibility to put on one character and one actor, but Waltz handles it masterfully, bringing his Inglourious Basterds charm to the dubiously-gallant Schultz. Of course he opposes slavery, because owning a human being is a barbaric notion, but… he still feels vaguely superior when faced with a black “equal”. Django Unchained is a fantastically-entertaining Spaghetti Western slapstick revenge drama that contains faintly-controversial race relations (and a wonderfully-maniacal Leo DiCaprio as plantation owner Calvin Candie).

This is probably the weirdest film on my list. Holy Motors is an absolute trip. It was the chosen film for the Vancouver International Film Festival’s closing gala. Wine, awards, speeches, and then… this. There is no way to summarize this film in any sort of coherent way, but I’ll do my damnedest. Denis Lavant plays a gallimaufry* of strange characters and attacks each of them with reckless abandon. He is a motion capture actor, a man on his death bed, a bag lady, an assassin, and at one point he bites a man’s fingers off, kidnaps Eva Mendes, hauls her to the sewer, and eats her hair. The tenuous thread holding together these disparate characters is the fact that Lavant plays an actor who is hired to play them. He travels the city in a limousine/dressing room, doing his own make-up and preparing his own costumes while he is shuttled between jobs. The film is a love song to the cinema, in all of its foibles, its technological advancements, its gratuitous ego. And it is a director’s love affair with an actor, Carax trusting Lavant to carry his battleship of a film through all the murky waters he sends it. It’s all very meta, very abstract, blurring the lines of artifice, reality, narrative, and totally screwing with filmic conventions. Lavant dies several times on screen and, even though we know it’s all a show, we’re still affected by his death(s) because of his astounding stage presence and emotive capabilities. But Carax doesn’t so much exploit his audience’s yearning for affective connection as he does expose the strengths and weaknesses of film’s ability to bring affective response about. Near the film’s climax, we find Lavant performing a soaring musical theatre-esque duet with none other than Kylie Minogue and, sentimental and contrived as it is, we find ourselves relaxing into the musical’s familiar conventions after being jostled about so vigorously. Of course, we’re never allowed to relax for too long and pretty soon Lavant is returning home to his wife the chimpanzee and we’re left at the Holy Motors garage, where the limousines park at night and discuss the days events with garish cartoon voices à la Pixar’s Cars.

At the film’s screening at VIFF’s closing gala, the festival director relayed an appropriate anecdote. Holy Motors premiered at Cannes alongside David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (which is also worth a watch, though it missed my Top 12). Cosmopolis stars Robert Pattinson as a billionaire investment banker who tours the city in his white limousine in search of a haircut. When he idly ponders, “Where do all the limousines go at night?” a savvy Cannes viewer shouted “Holy Motors!” to a smattering of applause, laughter, and disapproving tsk’s. And this is what Holy Motors has the ability to do: garner laughter, applause, disapproval, disgust, and invade other films by virtue of its mere existence.

Here is a film that deserves to be seen. It is absolutely brimming with love and violence. Unlikely couple Marion Cotillard (a killer whale trainer) and Matthias Schoenaerts(a bouncer and underground MMA fighter) are electric, tender and real. Theirs is a love story that destroys sentimentality while still clinging fiercely to it. There is an immediacy to Audiard’s direction that puts sharp feeling into punches, tears, and sex. And it boasts perhaps the most emotionally-affecting use of a Katy Perry song (“Firework”) that has ever or will ever exist. It should be getting a relatively wide release, so seek it out if you can.

One-Line Review: Sexy, sad & violent.

4. The Hunt (Jagten) [VIFF: Vancity Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

This stark drama is Danish filmmaker (and co-founder of the Dogme 95 movement) Thomas Vinterberg’s best film since his breakout The Celebration (Festen). I realize that I am now in serious film-snob territory, considering the fact that I’m going on about Dogme films and that numbers 6, 5, and 4 on my list all had verrry limited release. But whatever, bite me. I like movies. Mads Mikkelsen plays a divorcee struggling to maintain a relationship with his son. His already troubled life is shattered wide open when he is accused of pedophilia. A well-loved elementary school teacher in a small Danish community, he becomes an immediate pariah, condemned by insidious popular consensus. Mikkelsen displays a tightly-wound tension between vulnerability and defiance in what I believe to be one of the year’s best performances. Vinterberg’s direction is tight and atmospheric, never dipping into melodrama in a very melodramatic situation. It is perfectly-paced and, like all great films, gets to the heart of human nature (ugly as it often is).

One-Line Review: Dark, gripping & powerful.

3. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson) [Park Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

PT Anderson’s latest is less a continuously-progressing story than it is a series of inter-connected vignettes in the lives of dangerously-damaged WWII veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Late-40s America gets the PT Anderson treatment, exposing the menacing disquiet underlying the facade of idyllic suburbia. Phoenix encapsulates male post-war malaise with aching perfection. And Hoffman’s preening is a brilliant lampoon of Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard. But the film is more than any of these things, as Anderson’s films always are. It’s about power, personality, a desperate search for home. But perhaps overshadowing even PTA’s talent as a filmmaker is Joaquin Phoenix’s monumental performance as Quell. His stoic self-destruction (consuming self-brewed concoctions of various household chemicals, including residual liquid from unused aerial bombs) is terrifying and utterly captivating to watch. It is one of the most astounding feats of acting I have ever seen and if he doesn’t win an Oscar, I’ll eat my shoe.

The Avengers makes you feel like a 12-year old again, creating rudimentary spreadsheets of superhero stats and staging imaginary battles to find out who would win. Wait, you didn’t do that? Doesn’t matter. This is what blockbuster cinema is meant to be. Joss Whedon’s dialogue shines (as it always does, and as pop-Hollywood dialogue tends not to). Putting Whedon in charge of such a financially-ambitious project was vindication for all those Firefly and Buffy fans who’ve felt cast aside over the years. With such a collection of alpha male egos (plus Whedon’s token ass-kicking female in the form of Scarlett Johansson), the danger was having an over-saturation of awesomeness, resulting in a cacophonous mess. But Whedon handles the characters like a fan would. Egos do clash, but in the service of the story. And you know you’ve got good writing on your hands when straight-man Agent Coulson (his first name is “Agent”) can upstage Ironman and have the audience entirely at his back. Though it works well as a stand-alone film, seeing its precursors (in particular the mostly-disappointing Thor) is necessary to complete the Avengers experience.

Benh Zeitlin’s first feature film is a monumental achievement. It’s one part fairy tale, one part poetry, and two parts intense realism. The film takes place in a fictional community in the Louisiana bayou called “The Bathtub”. The lead character, five-year old Hushpuppy is played with extraordinary surety by Quvenzhané Wallis (now the youngest Oscar-nominee in the history of the awards). She and her father, Wink (Dwight Henry) survive day-to-day in the overwhelming poverty of the Bathtub and weather a devastating tropical storm (with shades of Katrina) together. Hushpuppy longs to seek out her absent mother and deals with Wink’s alcoholism and unreliability with her own child-like stoicism. There is so much love and beauty in this film, with an array of amazing performances and spectacular visuals creating an atmosphere unlike any other. The mostly-amateur cast (Dwight Henry was a bakery-owner who wasn’t even looking for an acting job when he was cast) deliver noteworthy performances all around. The film has a strong non-linear visual spirit throughout, bolstered by Hushpuppy’s poetic, philosophic narration, but the story takes over at the film’s climax and the non-linear tone resolves its emotional journey with Zeitlin’s powerful storytelling.

It’s encouraging to see a local (i.e. Vancouver) film with such a limited budget that looks as good as The Odds. This beautifully-shot film is the first feature from writer/director Simon Davidson and stars a slew of Vancouver talent. Tyler Johnston stars as Desson, a high school senior who gets caught up in an illegal gambling ring. Murder and mayhem necessarily follow.

The film is intended as a fresh take on the high school thriller genre, with a dash of film noir thrown in for good measure. The film’s aesthetic hits all the right notes, with deep, cool colours, dark shadows, and shallow depth of field all helping to create an effective atmosphere for the film. In a Q&A panel at the Vancouver premiere, Davidson claims cinematographer Norm Li took his cues from David Fincher’s Zodiac cinematographer Harris Savides and shot much of the film two stops under “ideal” aperture (without Davidson’s knowledge) to ensure that night exteriors were dark and deep. Good work, Li. Because the cinematography is one of the shining points of the film, with the early wrestling scenes being some of the most skillfully-composed (with a nod to editor Greg Ng as well).

The Odds, unfortunately, suffers from over-writing on Davidson’s part. Instead of letting situations play out in Li’s capable visuals, nearly every scrap of information is crammed into unnecessary dialogue. Despite citing Jacques Audiard as an influence (in that his characters are neither good nor bad, but “somewhere in between”) Davidson feels it necessary to spell out every character motivation for us. It’s obvious that he is trying desperately to make his film into Rian Johnson’s Brick, and while he is on the right track from a technical standpoint, with capable direction of both camera and actors, The Odds could’ve used a screenwriter.

Tyler Johnston as Desson exhibits an easy charm and honesty that carries the film forward, but is not given the opportunity to express much emotion other than his detached confidence and sexy just-off-camera eyelines.

Julia Maxwell is beautiful as Colleen, at turns vulnerable and strong, making the best of an under-written character who in the end is peripheral to the story itself, despite being the film’s ostensible female lead.

Robert Moloney is the best actor in the film, his self-loathing apathy as Desson’s father a source of sympathy, frustration, and humour. Scott Patey and Jaren Brandt Bartlett as antagonists of sorts fall into cliché occasionally, but hold their own. Calum Worthy also turns in an effective performance as Barry.

Patric Caird provides an original soundtrack and the industrial-dirty-underground-electronic stuff he comes up with lends an air of badassery to a bunch of kids playing cards in Paul’s mom’s basement that might not otherwise have been there. However, his soaring violins serve not so much to complement the film’s emotional scenes, but to overpower them with melodrama and could have been reigned in a bit.

I’d like to take a few seconds to send out props to a local Vancouver band, Cumulus Discord, who played an acoustic set Saturday night (21 April 2012) at Cuppa Joy Coffee in Kitsilano. Cuppa Joy gave them the floor for the evening and they played two 50-minute sets.

Frontman Alexander Keurvorst was charismatic as ever, belting out poetry with a voice that rang as sweetly as if an angel had taken up a celestial tuning harp and struck it on a star. His soaring melodies brought the room to a breathless silence, released only when the last vibration of his guitar’s nylon strings faded into the inchoate ether of the spell that been cast upon the room. A thunderous applause awoke us from our rapture — had we been but dreaming?

Ingrid Cheung’s army of flutes and incomparable harmonies had lulled us into a trance-like stupor. We existed only in the moments of pure music emanating from her lips — no future, no past; only the sheer, unadulterated ecstasy of her aerophone glory.

The violin was held in the delicate and sensual hands of a true master. Devon Kroeger pulled our heart-strings taut and bowed them as if she knew them intimately. If a man or woman present was not ready to give their life for another moment of Devon’s sensuous stringing, then they possessed cold, dead souls.

Marcus Luk, of course, is the power behind the throne upon which these kings and queens of music are seated. Steadily pushing them to new and greater heights, he percusses — now fast, now slow, we all are subject to his divine whims.

Re-interpreting the work of the modern era’s undisputed poet laureate, Mark Allan Hoppus, Cumulus Discord created a magnificent and fresh reading of his most cherished work, “Dammit (Growing Up)“, eliciting layers of meaning hitherto undiscovered.

A work of their own, “Cherry Orchard”, so named after the Anton Chekhov play offered a sad and simple oblation of the mundane things in life to the realm of divine comedy which they more appropriately belong in the untouchable world of our four raconteurs.

Cumulus Discord even had a query for us, their humble and unworthy audience — they currently seek a change of nomenclature. Cumulus Discord, clearly, is not a name which encompasses their unrivaled majesty and, as an act of good will to their adoring fans, deigned to request suggestions for what we in the mortal realm would describe as a “band name.” Personally, I am partial to Good Morrow.

If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended; that next you visit Cuppa Joy, here gods walked among the boys.

On the set of Yuri Cabrera‘s short film “Smile”. While setting up for a shot, Yuri grabbed a camera and had me improv a backstory for my character. So I put on my best Mockney accent and did my utmost to channel the great Russell Brand.

It’s not really a Russell Brand impersonation – more so just my attempt to conjure the spirit of the S&M Willy Wonka. Below, for your viewing pleasure, is Russell Brand’s 5-minute Shakespearean riff on his character Trinculo in Julie Taymor’s production of The Tempest. All hail the Shagger of the Year.

Cronenberg’s latest is something of a period piece. Horse-drawn carriages, manicured gardens, haute couture, and erotic spanking. .. Wait, what? Yes, sexuality (transgressive sexuality in particular) is an integral component in A Dangerous Method, as its primary players are the fathers of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, played by Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, respectively. One only has to mention Freud’s name to conjure phrases like “penis envy” and “castration complex.” But the salient sexuality in the film comes not from Freud, but from Jung and his affair with patient/student Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly). The film is really about two relationships – Jung and Spielrein, and Jung and Freud – and how they develop over the 10 years that the film spans.

Keira Knightly’s manic hysteria as Spielrein has been unfairly criticized as exaggerated and off-putting. But for all her cringing, chin-jutting, and delirious laughter, there is an indelible vulnerability in her performance. Viggo Mortensen is fascinating as a relaxed, arrogant, often-humorous Freud. And Fassbender is engaging as always.

The film very effectively integrates the development of Jung’s relationships with Freud and Spielrein with the development of his theories of the psyche. For anyone familiar with Jung’s work, the nascent incarnations of archetype and anima/animus are evident. And Vincent Cassel appears as the lecherous and anarchistic Otto Gross, a clear personification of what Jung would later term the “shadow self” or “dark side” wherein all the impulses the ego would normally consider unsavory are held. (And, yes, it was Jung who coined the term “dark side,” not George Lucas.)

The only poorly-executed moments come in Cronenberg’s portrayal of the issues that made for the fundamental discord between Freud and Jung. Freud took issue with Jung’s emphasis on spirituality and religion as a channel for psychological analysis – he thought it was limiting. Jung saw Freud’s techniques (especially finding the root cause for neurotic/abnormal behavior in childhood trauma and repressed sexuality) as reductive. Jung believed in the mysterious nature of the psyche. “Our psyche is part of nature,” he says (the real Jung, not Fassbender-Jung), “and its enigma is as limitless. Thus we cannot define either the psyche or nature. We can merely state what we believe them to be and describe, as best we can, how they function.” (Jung, Man & His Symbols, 1964). And Jung saw religion as a legitimate expression of the psyche’s mystery.

Nowhere, however, is this evident in the script. We hear Jung complaining to Spielrein that there must be something other than just sexuality to account for changes in the psyche. And later, in Freud’s office, he seems to get very excited about a “burning in his stomach” that he calls a “catalytic exteriorization phenomenon” – basically a precognition ability. But at no point does the film mention religion or spirituality and at no point does it have any bearing on the development of Jung’s character. It simply feels peripheral and out of place in the story – which is odd, because it was central to the breakdown of Jung’s relationship with Freud.

Jung’s relationship with Spielrein is at turns sad and sexy and ultimately satisfying, but his relationship with Freud, while it has some affecting moments, as a whole falls flat.

Verdict: It is an intelligent, beautifully-shot film – and wonderfully-acted. Unfortunately, one of its primary components (which happens to be the most famous relationship and feud in the history of psychology) feels lacking and out of place.